"Tomorrow A Dream"

Through the years, the Caldari State’s reigning
ideology has been broadly defined by its emphasis on hard work, sacrifice, and
the welfare of the collective over the welfare of the individual. Central to the
Caldari mindset is the assumption that people work better when motivated by a
feeling of contribution to a greater good, but even more important is the idea
that people naturally gravitate toward the sphere of craft they are best suited
for, as well as the position they should occupy within it. How has this
philosophy been shaped over the tumultuous lifetime of the Caldari nation,
though, and where does it stand today?

In the early days of Caldari-Gallente relations, when
the two nations had just come into contact with each other, the somewhat unusual
structure of Caldari government was explicitly set up so that no one person
could wrest power from the council. The notion of individuality, so prized by
the Gallente, tended to be viewed by the Caldari as little more than selfish
blindness to the grander scheme of things, and was frowned upon by the vast
majority of their leaders as well as the industrious masses that made up the
civilian populace. After the first Gallente-Caldari war, the Chief Executive
Panel – the corporate heads making up the Caldari State’s ruling body – went
even further with this ideology, soon enough taking their seat as polar
opposites to their hated nemeses. While it may seem tempting to ascribe this to
the ideological rubberbanding sometimes experienced by newly independent states,
there is a great deal of historical data that suggests that even as far back as
the time of the Raata-Oryioni empire thousands of years ago, the people who
would later become the Caldari were already highly collectivistic in outlook and
action.

For the newly-at-peace Caldari State, however – a
nation bruised and bleeding from a lengthy war – things took on a different
tenor. In the sudden absence of a unifying enemy, the people who at that time
made up the Chief Executive Panel found themselves gradually turning their
attentions to each other. Internal competition between the eight ruling
corporations increased. Suggested initiatives and reforms usually served to
somehow pad the coffers of the corporation that came up with them, ideally at
the expense of their most direct competitors. While competence and devotion to
the State were still held in overt esteem to as great a degree as ever – and,
indeed, used as religiously in the nation’s propaganda as they are today – the
foundations these values were built on had begun to subtly slide.

As time passed, the entrenchment of those in power, as
well as their fierce devotion to their internal competition, began to have
trickle-down effects on the Big Eight’s top tiers. Believing their own modes of
governance and management preferable to whatever successors the Board of
Directors would offer up, the CEOs of the megacorporations began to pull the
strings behind the scenes, making sure their own protégés ascended to positions
where they would take over the reins when the time came. They also made sure
that key positions within the corporate hierarchies were occupied by people
whose goals and opinions coincided with their own. Thus, slowly but surely,
covert dynasties began to snake their tendrils around the Caldari State’s power
structures.

By the time the capsuleers started making waves on the
world scene, the State’s hierarchies were crowded with individuals who had come
by their positions through the mendacious maneuverings of well-placed superiors,
and this played a significant role in the sharp economic downturn faced by the
Caldari State. Each of New Eden’s four major nations had suffered some form of
economic setback in the wake of the ultra-rich capsuleer class’s meteoric rise,
but the Caldari, due to their set-in-stone mentality and reluctance to adapt,
were perhaps the hardest hit. Unemployment skyrocketed. Goods and services rose
in price. Imports and exports declined.

Sensing the shift in worldwide power, the Chief
Executive Panel responded by coocooning themselves from the outside world and
taking up isolationist policies. Diplomatic relations, never a strong part of
the Caldari political skillset, became almost nonexistent. Even in the wake of
such disasters as the Protein Delicacy incident (where Caldari-manufactured
luncheonette foods were found to cause mental deficiencies in Gallente
schoolchildren) or the Insorum incident (where a chemical compound capable of
reversing the effects of one of Amarr’s most relied-upon slave drugs was leaked
from a Caldari biolab), the State’s diplomats did little to placate those
aggrieved by their mistakes. The Caldari nation was as mighty as ever, but it
was hardening up from the inside out. It would take a major change to shake
things up, and in YC 110 that change came in the form of a radical new leader,
Tibus Heth.

Finding nepotism-spawned inefficiency all over the
State, Heth instigated several reforms intended to bring Caldari back to its
roots as a meritocratic society. To this end, he employed his most trusted
director, Janus Bravour, to set in motion a series of initiatives that would
root out those undeserving of their positions and install in their stead people
who had truly earned the right to be there. With the proper gears meshing in
unison, the State would once again take its rightful role as a trampling
juggernaut of commercial, industrial and military might.

Heth’s reforms reached into every sector of corporate
activity. He began by confiscating the wealth of mid- to high-tier managers and
executives all across the State and redistributing it among the lowest rungs of
the workforce. He created programs that made sure people received adequate
compensation for hard work, in the form of annual leave and early retirement. He
greatly increased funding for education and re-education initiatives. He
promoted worker summits wherein individual ingenuity was given an outlet. The
main goal: to make sure that no matter which rung on the ladder a person
occupies, they stand at least a fighting chance of making it to the rung above
them – provided they truly deserve it.

Under the new system, social status is no obstacle to
advancement. Within ten years’ time, over half of the State’s schools will be
equipped with advanced screening methods for detecting unusual aptitude, so that
those so gifted can be directed toward areas where their talent will do the most
good. Institutions are being set up to give grants to armchair inventors and
small business owners who never had the chance to take their ideas to a higher
level. Government spies already are being disseminated among the ranks of the
corporations and tasked with weeding out nepotism wherever they find it.

In the time since Heth took power a sizable number of
citizens, believing the rule of a single man to contradict Caldari ideals, have
left the country. The assumption among them has been that like the despots and
dictators that litter history’s pages he would surround himself with a power
clique and leave the rest of the nation blowing in the wind, eroding the
nutritious soil of cultural values that had kept the State strong throughout its
existence. The nationalistic bent of his policies and his military ruthlessness
have also caused a degree of alarm, prompting some citizens to question
(quietly, of course) how their morality and their national identity fit together
in these latest and darkest times.

In the span since Heth’s inauguration, however, the
turnaround in economic growth has been undeniable. Caldari have more money in
their pockets. They are more secure about their retirement. People who under the
old system would have found themselves forever excluded from certain positions
now reside within those positions. The general feeling, on the streets and in
the stations, is that for better or worse something great and grand is underway,
that the previous system was ailing and outmoded, and that the New Meritocracy
(as it has been dubbed by the press) is a return to form for a great nation
shackled too long in the chains of favoritism. Averting their eyes from the
darkness all around them, the Caldari people now for the first time in years set
their sights on a brighter future.